Just a short one before I go to work, more later Enjoy! Jessie xx

Detective Inspector Brian Lane

"1997. Anthony Kaye," Brian pointed to the picture of the young face that had haunted his life for sixteen years. "Brought in on charges of possession and intent to supply. He was a known associate of a prolific dealer at the time. Kaye was being groomed to take on the supply chain, so that the dealer who was being watched by both us and his competition could step out of the lime-light and focus on the shipping," he paused and looked around at his audience. "Anthony Kaye died in police custody that night. He was found by the arresting officer, face down in his own vomit. He'd been left alone for less than two minutes."

Gerry watched his mate carefully; he wasn't sure he would be able to remain as calm as Brian if he was introducing the case that had put the brakes on his career. He'd just got pissed off with the constant accusations of corruption and thrown in the towel; Brian had been the victim of a massive administrative and moral cock-up as far as he could make out. He didn't buy into the whole conspiracy that Brian had hinted at in the past, but something didn't smell right. Looking around at his other colleagues, he saw Steve listening intently with curiosity; Sandra was perched on the edge of Brian's desk, watching Brian as he was.

"Who was the arresting officer?" Steve asked.

"Detective Inspector Brian Lane," Brian replied simply. "Me."

"You?" Steve exclaimed. "And we're investigating this?"

"We're investigating a miscarriage of justice," Sandra explained calmly. "Brian was suspended, pending an investigation which never happened."

"Not properly," Gerry added.

"Wait, so you knew we were doing this too?" Steve asked, quite shocked. "Well…"

"I asked Gerry to look at the case file with me before we approached you guys with it," Sandra tried to explain patiently. "I didn't want us to re-open this without being sure that we had sufficient grounds to."

"That's fair," Steve acknowledged. Whatever else he was, he was fair. And whatever his personal feelings might be, Brian's came first. He knew that custody death cases were a nightmare, thankfully from an investigatory perspective not personal as Brian did. He also knew that this case had the potential of being Brian's last case. "So, this guy Kaye; suicide?"

"That was the official line," Gerry agreed. "But half the post-mortem report is blacked out."

"The custody sergeant on duty that night left the job two months after it happened," Sandra continued. "He claimed not to seen anyone come or go in the time frame that Brian left Kaye. And no-one saw Brian in the time that he was gone." She shot an apologetic glance to Brian, who simply pushed his glasses up his nose; he already knew this.

"So, sorry to ask, but where were you?" Steve asked.

"I went to the toilet," Brian said simply. "I left him alone in that cell for less than two minutes. It looked like an overdose, he could have taken it before we got to the house to arrest him. The reaction delayed, could have occurred at any point. It just had to happen when I was peeing."

He looked around at his colleagues, all of whom had deadly serious expressions plastered on their faces. He laughed humourlessly. "I…believed at the time, and some time after, that I'd been set up. That Anthony Kaye was murdered in that station and I was set up to take the rap. I was being treated for depression at the time and it was advised that I get a doctor's note in my defence. A note that basically said I was barking mad and unfit for duty. I was suspended, later dismissed. I never found out what happened that night. And I want to know. If it was suicide, if it was an overdose; I want to know why that young man died. It was my last case, it is my last case, this time I want to close it."

"What happened about the drugs case? This dealer and supplier stuff?" Steve asked.

"They caught the head of the chain, he admitted to grooming Kaye and was sent down," Gerry supplied. "That's solid, I looked into it."

"So that leaves the dodgy post-mortem as our first port of call?" Steve concluded. "Were any of the other officers on the original case brought under scrutiny?"

"No," Brian looked at the board where his own younger face leered down at him. "There were two detective constables and a detective sergeant working on the case and in the station that night, all of whom were seen in the canteen during the time I was in the cells with Kaye and during the time he died. The DCS overseeing the case was in a meeting with another DI."

"I want all their statements gone back over," Sandra said. "We need to talk to Anthony Kaye's family; find out if there are any other circumstances for which he'd want to take his own life," she looked sympathetically at Brian. "The officers in charge of the investigation too and Brian, we'll need to talk to you." Brian nodded. "I know it doesn't need to be said, but this has to be done properly. If we do find that anything suspect happened that night, I don't want to be caught out."

She looked to the door as it opened and Rob quietly entered.

"Good morning everyone," he said.

She could see in his eyes that he was not having a great day. The events of Sunday, although overtly dealt with, were still very much on his mind. She couldn't deny that they were still on hers too. As they discussed the case with him and he offered his own echoes of the need to do this properly and with sensitivity; she could tell his mind was on the verge of wandering back to the shadows of yesterday. Gerry offered him a coffee as the discussion wrapped up, he declined as he had to get back upstairs to a case that he was overseeing in another department.

"What's up with him? Have you had a row?" Gerry asked bluntly after he'd gone.

"No," she closed her eyes. "Why are you so interested in my personal life today?"

"Because you've never had one before," the levity in his tones didn't make her laugh. It also didn't rile her to the point of retaliating as it might have done. It just made her tired.

"Just drink your coffee," she told him. She took the mug he handed her and sat on the red sofa. She needed to keep it together. Her temper was frayed, her emotions were shot. If she was a psychologist, she'd say that it was a subconscious reaction to finally having someone in her life that would catch her when she fell. If she thought about it rationally, she might realise that there was some truth in that diagnosis. As it was, she just wanted to get on with the job. Dragging her eyes away from the corner of the board that she'd been staring at, she picked up the pile of statements that Brian had separated for each of them and started to read.